The End of a Papacy

March 31,
2005

Thomas
Jefferson was a great man, but not
necessarily a great
president. In
the same way, Im not
sure that John Paul II has been a great pope; but I have no doubt that he is a
very great man. Hes still proving it.

Writing of Charles Dickens, G.K.
Chesterton remarked that the term great man is indefinable, but
not vague: Whatever the word great means, Dickens
was what it means. We can try to describe the great man, but our
praise always seems inadequate.

Most of us had never heard of
Cardinal Karol Wojtyla when he suddenly became, in 1978, the first
non-Italian pope in several centuries. This vigorous Pole had endured German
and Soviet oppression of his country, and the world thrilled at his courage as
he inspired Polands Solidarity movement to defy Communisms
tyranny. The ruthless regime was still murdering priests, but it turned out to
be surprising fragile against an unarmed populace that had had enough. In a
few years, European Communism was dead. It had proved no match for John
Pauls authoritative personality.

I saw him in person once, in a large
private audience at the Vatican in 1982, a year after he was shot. I never
saw a man of such commanding presence. Even in relaxation, he appeared to
have been born to rule St. Peters.

Today this youthful, energetic
pope has become a frail old man, hardly able to speak, yet facing death with
the same inspiring courage he showed against Communism. Can it be mere
coincidence that he had a feeding tube inserted at the same time a feeding
tube was being removed from Terri Schiavo?

Yet hes the same man he
always was. A hero to the West, he has nevetheless devoted much of his
papacy to a severe critique of the modern West, chiefly its materialism and
its culture of death. He has risked his great popularity to
reiterate Catholic teaching against abortion, contraception, and euthanasia.
He has also upheld Catholic dogma and stood firmly against ordaining women
as priests; his bitterest opponents have always been liberal Catholics. He has
viewed Americas recent wars sternly.

Few
popes have ever rivaled John Paul II in the dramatic gesture. Surely his most
dramatic was his 1983 visit to Mehmet Ali Agca, the assassin who had shot
him in 1981. He went to Agcas prison cell to forgive him. (The
Popes personal physician told me the bullet had missed a vital artery
by a millimeter; if it had struck that artery, there would have been no hope
of saving him.)

And of course John Paul is the
most widely traveled pope of all time, greeting huge adoring crowds around
the world until he was too feeble to do so anymore. On his first visit to
Washington, he waved to a little girl in the front row of the crowd on
Pennsylvania Avenue  my daughter.

Nor can we forget John Paul the
avid skier. He did all sorts of things popes werent expected to do,
with a joie de vivre not usually associated with the papacy. He has also
written books of philosophy and poetry and made recordings. You never knew
what this surprising pope was going to do next. He has also canonized more
saints and elevated more cardinals than any previous pope.

Still, orthodox Catholics ask
whether his papacy has been a success. He seems to have retained a naive
Sixties faith in ecumenical dialogue, however fruitless it
turned out to be. The maladies that have infected the Church since the
Second Vatican Council (at which he was an enthusiastic participant)
havent been remedied  liturgical corruption, low Mass
attendance, poor Catholic education, errant bishops, heretical theologians.

And one of the worst scandals in
Catholic history erupted on his watch: the revelation that homosexual priests
had been abusing boys. This was a natural result of the homosexual
domination of American (and possibly other) Catholic seminaries that had
been increasing since the 1960s, well before John Pauls papacy; but
he seemed to have had no clue that it was going on and hardly to have
believed it when he learned. That doesnt speak well for his
supervision.

But all in all, no man of our time
has even begun to rival his stature. Whatever great means, John
Paul II is what it means.

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